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Wednesday, April 10, 2013

I have been on
my server since 2005 when it was first launched and in that time my server has
gone from being a medium population server (ever so briefly) to being a low
population server less than a year after going live. Since then, it has
remained a low pop server. While at the time it wasn’t a big deal, the
population on the server has steadily declined. During Vanilla, before paid
transfers were implemented, most people rolled on a server and stayed on that
server until they either stopped playing or found a reason to start over on a
different realm. If you reached level 60 on a character, people tended to stay
on that server because it was such a pain to re-level on a new server. Once
paid transfers were introduced the barrier to leaving your server was removed.
Players were free to transfer their characters to new servers to play with
friends/coworkers/raiding guilds/etc.

Of course this didn’t
affect the larger realms since the higher population numbers meant they could
afford to lose some people to other servers without it affecting the overall
population. Unlike larger servers, the smaller servers suffered because the realms
couldn’t afford to lose so many people. As new people began playing WoW, most would
pick the larger realms because the population made them more appealing than the
low pop counterparts. Who wants to roll a new character on what appears to be
an empty server when they can roll on a busy server that looks to be more fun? Not
all transfers were off of low pop realms. Some people transferred to smaller
servers to play with friends or because they grew tired of life on a larger
server.The transfers in weren’t numerous enough to slow the tide of people
leaving.

There are a few
things that affect low pop realms that you might not think about on larger
population servers:

·lack of materials on the auction house prohibiting you
from leveling professions without farming materials

·difficulty
finding people to quest/instance/raid with from the server

·difficulty starting a new guild or joining a new guild

·recruitment can feel like the most difficult thing ever

·frustration trying to meet new people.

The last two
are the hardest to deal with as a guild leader. I often have to PuG people into
raids when we don’t have enough guildees to fill a raid. I ask those in the
raid if they have any people on their friend’s lists that would be interested
in raiding. And when that doesn’t work I’ve been forced to go to trade chat. On
my server, trade chat is usually a barren wasteland.

I don’t mean that
the server is a post-apocalyptic land, filled with horrible things, but rather
in that it feels like everyone is gone except for me. When I say something in
trade, it stays in the chat window until it eventually disappears. People
rarely talk in trade and sadly when they do it’s usually a few trolls who want
to spam anal jokes or other equally dumb memes. If you are trying to sell
anything in trade, you might be waiting for a long while before anyone responds.
Like I said, this is just for my server but I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if
other low pop servers experienced the same thing.

The auction
house can often be hit or miss for items that are usually listed in large
quantities on other servers. The number of people who are out in the world
farming for mats is smaller so the
items go quickly. Prices are, of course, skewed because people don’t want to
pay outrageous amounts for items like can be expected on larger servers where
there are more people with money to spend. Trying to sell anything through
trade chat is difficult, if not impossible, so the AH is often the only place
to sell stuff. As with most markets, there are items that consistently sell,
but even high demand items can take a relisting or two before they sell because
people aren’t online looking to buy all the time.

And recruitment??
Don’t even get me started on how hard it is to recruit competent people! We
have an age and personality requirement for our guild. In order to join you have to be over 18 and be a decent person.
We don’t force people to raid if they don’t want to, but if they want to raid,
we help them get gear so that they can meet our raiding minimums. When we
recruit we will advertise (not spam) in trade chat in a major city, use the in-game
guild finder, advertise on twitter, and post on various forums. The people on
our server (the few left) tend to already be guilded, not interested in our
guild, or don’t meet our two requirements.

Trying to get
people to transfer to the server to join our guild doesn’t happen because the
server is low pop and people don’t want to spend the money to transfer. If
people decide to roll a new character on the server, the server inevitably
disappoints them and they leave. We have had a small number of people join
the guild but obviously it was more luck that they found us than anything else.

By this point
in the post you are probably wondering what the hell all this information about
low pop servers has to do with anything. Well first off I’m on a low pop and
this is what I have to do deal with every day I decide to play. Second, I am
writing because Blizzard has yet to do anything about this situation and it has
caused a lot of frustration. In order to get rid of some of this frustration, I
am writing about it. So I’m bitching about the situation but do I have any real
suggestions? As a matter of fact I have a few! While they may not be the best
solutions, they are at least something positive that can be tried out:

·Merge the servers

·Open current tier for cross-realm raiding

·Enable free transfers for guilds TO low pop servers
from more than just 2-3 high pop servers

Merge the
servers

This is often
the first thing most people demand of Blizzard when it comes to low pop
servers. So I’ll talk about it first. Currently Blizzard has about 256 US/South
American/Oceanic realms. Of those servers, 54 are marked as low pop. That means
that just over 20% of servers are low pop. Blizzard doesn’t release exact
population numbers for servers, so we don’t have an exact population numbers
for what makes up a low, medium, or high
population. We do have nifty websites like realmpop.com
that gives an approximation based on armory trawling. Because this uses data
from the armory, it includes alts and the unplayed characters that still show
up on the armory. Obviously inflates the numbers that realmpop displays, but
since that’s all we have it’s what I’ll use.

According to
realmpop, the lowest population on a low pop server (Chromaggus-PVP-US) is
about 18,600 and the highest (Destromath-PVP-US) is 58,000. Compare this to the
lowest population on a high pop server (Dath’Remar-PVE-US) at 80,000 and the
highest population (Tichondrius-PVP-US) at 205,500. The gap between the
smallest and largest high pop servers is larger than the highest population on
a low pop server.

So now that my
math has made my head hurt, let’s talk about merging them servers! So if you
have so many servers with such a low population, why not merge them into one
medium or high population server? The Blizzard developers are constantly asked
about this and questioned about why it hasn’t been done to correct the problem.
Their responses are usually “we’re looking into it but it isn’t something we’re
going to do right now.” The reasons they give are related to problems with
character/guild names across the merged servers as well as the problem of
forcing people to leave their server.

I get their
concerns, I really do. I’d be more than a bit upset if my mage and guild of 8
years suddenly had to have its name changed. Is this an insurmountable obstacle
for realm merging? No. Through cross-realm grouping we’ve already experienced
running a group with people who have the same name but are on different
servers. How does the game handle that? It added their realm name to their character
name. So what you’ll see is Arthasdklol – Ursin and Arthasdklol – Illidan in
the same raid without the game breaking. Why not merge the servers into a new
server and add the previous server name to the characters with name clashes? If
you have a character with a unique name then you don’t have to add the previous
server but if you have a commonly used name, you add the – previous server name
to the name. It allows people who’ve had their names to keep them.

This also works
for guild names. There could be an Avengers of Azeroth – Ursin and an Avengers
of Azeroth – Dalaran, for example. I think if they did this it would allow
guilds to still keep their names as well as allowing each guild to represent
where they came from. I’m sure that this would take some work to get sorted out
but honestly a little hard work now means later on a lot more people are happy
in game. Sure it might look a little weird at first but if it’ll give me a
server with real people to play on, I’ll get used to it!

Open the
current tier for cross realm raiding

Why are raiding
guilds transferring off low pop servers and taking a large amount of people
with them? Because they can’t recruit people for their raid teams and so they
must look to greener pastures to maintain their way of life. In the last three
weeks my server has lost about 5 raiding guilds because they couldn’t find new
recruits. Two of those guilds were in the top four guilds on the server for
progression and the other three were not far behind.

Each guild has
given the same reason for leaving the server: finding new recruits that can
raid at the level/time that the guild requires was next to impossible for them.
So they all went to larger realms where they could recruit the people that they
needed. I know that as a raid leader of a casual guild, I HATE having to cancel
our raid because we don't have enough people to fill the raid. It’s super
frustrating to spend an hour in trade trying to find one or two people, but have
no luck. If I were in a progression raiding guild, and was the raid leader of a
team that often cancelled raids because people weren’t available, I'd be
looking to move somewhere I could find people who could raid.

Blizzard has
given us the ability to run dungeons, heroics, scenarios. and raids together
through the wonders of cross-realm grouping, but we can only raid the previous
tier of content. This means that while the Throne of Thunder raid is the
current raid tier, we can only raid MSV, HoF, and ToES since those are considered
the previous tier. I've been in several successful cross realm raids with
people from twitter. If I am running MSV or HoF with my guild and I find myself
short a dps or two, I can hit up my friends list, openraid, the TLR forums, and
even twitter to find someone to fill the raid. Cross-realm raiding has made it
possible for people to be on different realms and still get a chance to raid. Your
server can be a low pop pvp server and it won't matter because you can invite
friends to fill your raid.

My suggestion
is to allow us to cross realm the current tier of raids. If I don't have enough
people to raid new raid instance, I can find people who want to run it. My
guilds biggest draw is that we have a great time when we raid. It's a low
stress raid and we often have moments when we can't stop laughing at something
that happened in raid chat or vent. When we pug people into our raids, they tend
to enjoy themselves and eventually we either get a new guildee or a person that
we know is really good and is willing to pug for us when we need someone.

This raid culture
has gotten more than a few people to either transfer to Ursin or to start a
brand new alt on the server to play with us. If I could raid current content
with cross realm people, it would

(1)allow us to
actually raid when we are short people

(2)possibly get
us a few new members, and

(3)let people
who wouldn't other wise raid the current content, raid said content.

Blizzard says they
don't know if they will allow this because they’re unsure what affect it'll
have on guilds. I guess Blizz seems to think that guilds are only created to
bring people together to raid. Maybe they've never heard of several small
guilds coming together to raid together without merging. Or possibly they've
never had alts that have raided with other guilds.

Whenever
opening current content to cross realm raiding gets mentioned, there are a few
vocal people who claim that it will ruin progression tracking. I guess they
seem to think that if you can suddenly raid current content, a pug of cross
realm raiders will manage to magically down everything and lay claim to all
server firsts for each person. The chances of that happening are slim to none. Even
fi it were a potential issue, Blizzard could make it so that realm first kills
are like guild raid achievements; You need 80% of people from a realm for it to
count as a realm first for that realm. For example, I am raiding Heroic Terrace
of Endless Spring in 10 man mode and have eight guildees in the raid, I pug in
two people from twitter and we manage to not only clear the raid but we also
get a realm first for downing the Sha of Fear. The 80% of people on my server
(my guildees) will get a realm first achievement while the two pugged people
will not.

It’s a simple
solution to a potential complaint. It
wouldn't mess with progression tracking because it’s almost all members of my
guild and the probability that we would have gotten that kill if we had two
more guildees is pretty high. No one is going to magically jump up in the
progression charts quicker than they would have moved by being able to pug in
cross realm people. BUT people will be able to raid with their friends and
progress and see the raid tiers before they are old content.

I would even go
as far as to say that by allowing this, progression guilds could see a high
influx of new members because they could run the current tier of raids with
applicants and this would allow the guilds to know whether the applicant would
be able to pull their weight in a progression raid without having to pay money
to server or faction change. If someone wants to join a raiding guild, they
have to apply to the guild, pay to transfer a character to the new realm, run a
few trial raids with the guild, and find out if they’re a good fit. If they
pass they get in and the money was well spent but if they don't get in, the
applicant just wasted money and they are now stuck on that server until they
find another guild elsewhere. If I was in the situation where I was looking for
a raiding guild, I'd love the option of NOT having to shell out money to find a
guild that works for me.

Enable
free transfers for guilds TO low pop servers from more than just 2-3 high pop
servers

When Blizzard
does allow transfers from high pop to a low pop server it’s usually from one or
two high pop servers to several low pop servers. This usually means that the
high pop server will see a small handful of people actually leave it to go to
the low pop servers. The high pop server doesn't see a decrease in population
and the low pop populations continues to decline.

My suggestion
is that they open realm transfers from the top 10 high pop servers to 3-4 low
pop servers. Now this won't make more people leave each server than normal BUT
with enough servers having the option to transfer off, the usual tiny trickle
of people could turn into a slight stream of people heading to low pop servers.
There are enough high pop servers that Blizz could easily do this enough times
to get at least a few new people on most of the low pop servers. It's a stretch,
but at this point anything is better than nothing.

So that's at least three things that Blizzard can do to help the low population
situation. Will they do any of these things? No clue. Would I LOVE it if they
did? Hell yes I would! Until then, I'll be on my server, doing my thing with my
guild, and hoping that we can get a few more people to join our guild and/or server.

Come on
Blizzard, don't make me cancel any more of my raids due to not having enough
people!

7 comments:

I feel your pain! I am 10m raiding guild GM on the low pop server Tortheldrin and can relate to everything you have mentioned. Recently we had the only other raiding guild server change so it leaves my guild as the only raiding guild. Being on such a dead server makes things so hard! Thankfully, we have a core group that rarely misses a raid but being on a low pop server makes it difficult to WANT to log in on non-raid nights. You should check out Www.lowpopwow.com for a podcast on making the best of low pop servers. Anyway, great read and hope your server sees better days in the future :)-Danascülly of Tortheldrin

" Open the current tier for cross realm raiding"I dont see why they couldnt uirui kuuuuhygchyytfjhk open it up just for low pop realms. I feel merged with other realms as it is with the cross realm zones.

anywho loved it and so did The Spawn, who decided to join in my comment.

Well Said... If only Bliz would listen! I had to move my main to a high pop server to raid... loved it.. always something to do. I had been ready to quit the game as it takes so long to put something together that it isn't worth playing. My old guild is in trouble and about to disband so I came back. Had been the first GM of it. I am hoping I can get a raid team together... Seems Bliz doesn't understand why they are losing so many people and you spelled it out perfectly!

As a GM of a 300+ people guild in Argyos, I feel the same pain. It's never been the same since CATA, and it's only getting worse after 5.3. So many viable raiders had left the server, making it very difficult to find good people to form viable raiding groups, and the TOT raids are simply too hard for ... casual raiders.

If the change the loot drops in a way that lower population servers have slightly better rates, it would at least provide an incentive for someone to move from a high population server to a lower one. Otherwise, there's no real reason to pay $$$ to go to a server where trade is close to dead, and you can't pug into raids easily. I favor this or server merge.

I think they really need to merge the servers so that all servers at least has 1/2 or 1/3 the population of the highest populated servers. The "world" is only attractive if it's populated. It's depressing to be the only one loitering in Stormwind ... sometimes....

If only Bliz would listen! I had to move my main to a high pop server to raid... loved it.. always something to do. I had been ready to quit the game as it takes so long to put something together that it isn't worth playing. My old guild is in trouble and about to disband so I came back. Had been the first GM of it. I am hoping I can get a raid team together... Seems Bliz doesn't understand why they are losing so many people and you spelled it out perfectly!LOL Boostlol elo boosting service

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I've been playing WoW for years and having fun doing so. Hopefully I can share some fun info or entertain others with my blog. I play on Alliance side on the Ursin-US PvP server. I have 15 characters over 80 and have been raiding since Molten Core.

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Avengers of Azeroth is recruiting level 80+ characters of all classes for end game fun and shenanigans! We are a rank 25 guild that focuses on 10 man raiding and have been raiding together for 7+ years and still going strong. We also do random achievement runs, title runs, gnomish death races, as well having some sexy and fun guild/vent conversations. If you are 18+ and think we sound like a good time and want to know more visit our website: www.avengersofazeroth.com